Is DVD Up-Conversion Good Enough?

Many companies these days are touting their DVD up-conversion technology as near high definition. The question is whether or not these players are worth getting or not. Do they really make DVD’s look near high definition quality? Are they as good as a Blu-Ray player?

The first thing you need to know is that if you still have a standard definition TV, then you do not need to waste your money on a Blu-Ray player or an up-converting DVD player. You will not see any of the benefits these players give you, because your TV will not have the ability display the higher resolution that these players will give you. If you have a standard definition TV, a cheap $20 DVD player is probably all you need.

Are up-converting DVD players as good as Blu-Ray players? No! An up-converting DVD player does improve the picture of a regular DVD most of the time, but by no means is it as good as a Blu-Ray player. What the up-converting players do is simply enhance the picture of the DVD by ‘guessing’ extra details from the DVD’s image and displaying what it thinks it’s missing. Blu-Rays, actually have that extra detail, giving you a much better picture. Blu-Ray is also the only current way to get the advanced audio codec’s such as Dolby True HD.

Is there really even a  need for an up-converting DVD player? That is really debatable. The only time you benefit from having a player which up-converts DVD’s is when you have a HDTV. On the other hand, your HDTV will convert whatever signal it is receiving into the native resolution of the HDTV’s display. That means that if you have a 720p HDTV, then anything it displays is going to be at 720p.

Up-converting DVD players usually do a slightly better job than your TV at giving you a better picture simply because they have advanced filtering options to choose from. In my opinion though, DVD up-conversion is just a fad. From what I’ve seen, their really isn’t enough of a difference between a regular DVD player and an up-converting player to justify the $100 to $200 price.